Phil Jenkins - vocals, guitars, lyrics,
Brian Dubbledam - bass, vocals, guitar, mandolin
Louis Rompré - flute, WX-7, wooden recorder, percussion, vocals
Jacques Charpentier - keyboards
This composition is intended for repeated play by astute commuters, to make your driving experience more carefree. The first half of the recording should get you nicely where you are going, while the second will bring you on home. And, for good measure, we've thrown in a night on the town.
Click on song titles below for sample MP3
SING AND DRIVE - IT'S STILL LEGAL. Safe listening and remember, if you're driving anywhere, take your car.
BIG FAT CROW - Crows are the car horns of the woods. A sunrise song.
BLACK & WHITE HIGHWAY - An upright original by Jacques. Ever noticed how the dotted white lines are like piano keys?
GREAT FIRE OF 1900 - Every city has a great fire, as Ottawa did in the spring of 1900. A horse drawn traffic jam ensued.
BETWEEN THE LINES - For those lost-behind-the-wheel moments.
SALTY WATER - A song for Canadians in uniform and out sent to places they shouldn't be.
KESTREL - An ode to the small hawk that hunts from its perch on the hydro lines.
HEADS I WIN, TAILS YOU LOSE - A honky-tonk ditty, one for the road.
SHADY LANE - Brian's mandolin waltz . Honey I'm home.
TAKE IT LYING DOWN - A ballad for day's end and folks who are homeward bound.
All arrangements by the band. Recorded at the Stove Studio, Chelsea, Quebec, the way Nature intended.
James Stephans and Dave Bignall took turns at the wheel, and David Cain did the tune-up.
The beat of my drum begins June 15th, 1951, the same day American DJ Alan Freed plays black music on a white station in Detroit, and rock and roll is born. In 1961, my family returns to Liverpool, England, from Ottawa Canada. Soon after a local group called the Beatles releases Love Me Do. For a decade everyone in Liverpool plays guitar; no-one plays tennis.
Back in Ottawa in 1978, I strike up a career as a performing songwriter, working the corners of bars. I roadie with a cover rock band ‘Mainstream’ for three years, all the while performing as a solo in bars and concert halls throughout eastern Canada, appearing when asked on the CBC Radio and TV.
I serve my apprenticeship in songwriting with a choir of aspiring singer/songwriters in the musical crucible of Rasputin’s Folk Club in Ottawa.
The songs start to arrive. They go in the dark corners and sing out the shapes they find there, and they run out in the sun and do a funny dance. When asked what I play, I dub it progressive folk. I write about music, columns about world music and songwriting for the Ottawa Citizen, about the local scene for Off Beat.
I’m a country boy, happiest with trees for neighbours, so I quit Ottawa and make for Wakefield, a railway stop in West Quebec’s. It’s the home of The Black Sheep, one of Canada’s great music rooms. I play there and team up with three other guys, and then we’re a band called Riverbend.
In 2004 we we release our calling card CD - CarTunes. It’s a musical commute from the country into the city and back, blending songs and instrumentals. Playing original music only, we do the Black Sheep, (several times) the Acoustic Waves series at the Great Canadian Theatre Company (twice) the Nepean Centrepointe(with the Barra McNeils).